ALIEN: Renegade Crew
by SprayCanOfDoom
Summary: Waking up on the Nostromo, the entire crew will be forged in fire when a shocking discovery is made. It's up to everyone banding together in a time of need to confront the real enemy, in a way that no-one could have anticipated. Is this really a chance to revise the past? Or something more sinister in nature? (Previously titled ALIEN: Missed Beacon)
1. Chapter 1 - Arrival

_**In memory of John Hurt and Bill Paxton, both a part of the cast that introduced me to the world I'd forever dearly love.**_

Ripley inhaled deeply, opening her eyes inside her hypersleep chamber. Her body wanting to jitter from the cold and sterile environment, she sat up and stretched her arms.

Around her, the rest of the crew began to rise too, slowly but surely.

Parker,

Brett,

Kane,

Lambert,

and Dallas.

Experiencing a strong sense of deja-vu, she yawned and began to get out of her chamber, right as Parker began to mouth off some banter to Brett.

"Cold enough for you in there? It's like the fuckin' arctic, man."

Brett lightly tapped him on the shoulder with his hands.

"You've never been to the arctic, how do you know what it feels like?"

And just like that, after years of sitting still, frozen in a tomb, the two were back at it, filling the air with noise that could slightly resemble meaningful discussion.

She looked at Dallas, who was trying to squint away his sleep fatigue. He rolled his eyes at the sound of the two going at it for the millionth time; how they had the energy to start back up right after a trip like that, he'd never know.

Ripley got up and stretched her legs, making her own way to the cabin area to shower, take a breather, and dress in the worn-out jumpsuit that had seen one cargo trip too many, if you went purely by looks.

Down the hall, in-between the banter, she could hear Lambert call out a question.

"Anyone have any strange dreams this time?"

"No," Dallas said, sighing in slight frustration at not having any coffee yet.

Lambert paused, and scrunched her face in thought.

"Me neither, weird," she said, after a moment.

"I had a good night's sleep, thank you. Nothing for the hypersleep journal under my name." Kane replied.

"You know, whenever I get a dream, it's always some stupid shit like running really slowly down a corridor, or having to fix something without any of my tools. I never end up getting anywhere with either of them, always waking up before I can make any real progress."

Brett stopped himself, confusion on his face. "Guess I didn't have anything either, this time, though."

"Brett, I'm not convinced you weren't born a middle-aged mechanic with a wrench in-hand and a cigar in your mouth."

Parker couldn't restrain himself from making a comment on what Brett said. Usually, the first twenty-four hours of these two were unbearable, until they calmed down.

"Hey, screw you, man! Where would you be without someone to give you a catch-up on what's happened in _Juniper Monthly_ every time we manage to get a long-range signal?"

Parker gave Brett a short bear hug, and both made their way to the crew quarters with everyone else.

Ripley wouldn't know where she would be without a nice, hot shower after every long dark nap involved with the job. The Nostromo didn't have many luxuries, but if there was ever an easier sell than convincing Dallas to invest in an excess thruster heat boiler, she wouldn't know.

After getting the ages-old crew outfit on, making her way to the dining room for something to eat was the next choice of action. She wasn't hungry, but if you didn't eat soon after waking, you were ravenous before you were even halfway through your first waking shift.

There, everyone sat around the large table, chatting and munching on whatever was agreed on.

Dallas sat across from Parker and Brett, glaring at them in-between sipping his coffee and reading a delivery dossier.

Sitting down between him and Lambert, her sense of deja-vu intensified as Parker began to speak.

"Dallas, me and Brett want full shares. You know, everyone is always getting bigger shares than us. This thing wouldn't move if it wasn't for our hard work, busting our asses just to make it keep firing."

Setting his coffee on the table, Dallas prepared himself for another argument on this topic.

"Everyone earns what they deserve. If you don't like it, take it up with a company representative."

"Company representative? Dallas, you're the Captain for god's sake. Getting us a bigger share is as simple as sending a request up the line yourself."

Dallas sighed, looking back at the papers in front of him.

"Parker, you signed a contract stating you agree to be paid a certain amount. You're entitled to safe working conditions and proper access to tools, food, medical care, and all while you're on the job. If you didn't negotiate, it's not my concern."

He looked back up, at Brett this time.

"That goes for you too, Brett."

Ripley wasn't touching her food. She couldn't, not with this feeling overwhelming her.

Just as Lambert was about to say something, she interrupted.

"Does, does anyone else think this is weird?"

"What kind of a question is that? What do you mean?" Kane said, just as he finished his soup.

"I mean, this doesn't feel right. I feel, I feel like..." Her voice trailed, but she held the room in suspense.

Lambert seemed enthralled at what she was saying, eager to know.

"Is it the food? It can be kinda shit sometimes" Parker offered up.

"No, it's just…"

She looked around at everyone sitting at the table, letting her eyes land on the empty seat next to Kane.

"Are we missing someone?"

"You're joking right? This is everyone." Dallas finished off his coffee, and got up for more.

Ripley's mind was racing. Searching, searching for whatever it was that felt missing to her.

 _Shipment?_

We left with the refinery for sure, we spent 12 hours carefully gliding it past the mine's gravity well.

 _Proper autopilot configuration?_

Lambert pulled brand-new maps and routing information before we even detached from the loading port.

 _Medical supplies?_

Last checked in inventory, everything was fully stocked and accounted for. Everything was ready and in order for the new Medical Offi-

"ASH!"

She sprung from her seat, suddenly panicking in fear and distress, as emotions and memories came flowing over her like a tsunami.

As she backed against the wall in sensory overload, the crew was momentarily in shock at what was transpiring before them, before Dallas jumped up and tried to comfort her.

"Oh my god, Ash! Where is Ash? He's a fucking android!"

Her speech was borderline incoherent babble, out of control as she started to cry as she remembered Newt, and Hicks, and the xenomorph, and everyone dying, and-

Dallas shot his head back towards the table, "Lambert! I need some help!"

She rushed to Ripley's side, trying to help her gather hold of herself as she slumped onto the ground against the wall, locking her arms and legs together.

She sobbed, remembering everything.

Dallas and Lambert consoled her, as she calmed down and was able to deal with everything just thrown at her mentally.

Able to think clearly, she focused on the imminent threat in her mind.

"Where is Ash? Dallas, we need to stop him, he's a synthetic, he's going to get us to land and we can't do that!"

Dallas looked at Lambert, who looked back at him.

"Ash? Ripley, I don't know who Ash is. Do you know, Lambert?"

"Not a clue."

As they comforted her, Brett, Parker, and Kane began to talk out of earshot, in low voices.

"Bad hypersleep dream, maybe?" Parker wondered, seemingly worried.

"I don't know man, I don't think anyone has ever reacted that strongly to a dream before."

"I'm going to go see if I can grab anything for her, those two seem pretty tied-up helping her calm down."

Kane stood up, and walked over to a recovering Ripley.

"Ripley, is there anything I can get you?"

Dallas helped her to her feet, and lead her back to sit down at the table, slowly but surely.

"What's a synthetic?" Brett poked Parker, asking him in a hushed voice.

"I don't know, sounds like it might be some sort of fake-person though."

"You mean like in those old Tyrell robot things?"

"I guess, I mean I've never seen one, ever."

Able to collect her thoughts, Ripley gladly took a glass of water from Kane and downed a nerve pill with it.

"Dallas, why are we stopped?"

He sighed, and looked around at everyone at the table.

"Well, as some of you may have figured out, we're not home yet. We're only halfway there."

She cut him off, a look of dread on her face.

"Dallas, we can't land. The emergency signal's fake, it's a fraud!"

His face portrayed bewilderment at what she had just said, catching him off guard. Stumbling over his words, he continued.

"We, uh, well, Mother found a distress signal on a nearby rock. I checked after we first woke up and weren't anywhere near the refinery drop-off."

"We're not a rescue team! We're a tow vessel!" Parker said indignantly, to Brett's approval.

Ripley couldn't believe she was hearing this all over again. She grabbed Dallas by the collar, pulling him close.

"Dallas, we are not landing on LV-426. It's a fake emergency beacon. It's not a distress call, it's a warning to anyone nearby. Now I'll ask you one more time."

Uncomfortably close to Ripley, he didn't have a choice to do anything than look her directly in her reddened, piercing eyes.

"Where. Is. Ash?"

He took a deep breath, and held it, unable to come up with anything in response.

She shoved him, and jumped up to run to her locker in her quarters down the hall. Using the key in her pockets, she scrambled the stainless steel lock open, and grabbed her utility belt.

As a warrant officer assigned to the Nostromo, she was permitted to carry one USMC-issued handgun. A 6-round, semi-automatic .357 revolver made by Spearhead Armory, was the only choice legally available to any officer or marshal wanting to pack a decisive punch at their side.

Strapping on the utility belt and holstering the revolver on it, she returned back to the dining room, everyone silencing themselves upon her entrance.

With everyone's eyes locked on her, Ripley had an abrupt realization sweep across her mind, as the steely gaze of the other crew members penetrated her deepest thoughts.

"Oh my god, you all think I'm crazy?"

Dallas glanced at his feet, and began to speak in a firm voice.

"Ripley, we're a bit concerned at-"

"You think I'm crazy? I'll tell you what you'll find once you land!"

He persisted, strengthening the resolve in his voice.

"We're a bit concerned at your state of affairs. If you-"

"You know what you're gonna find? You're gonna find something that kills everyone here! It's gonna kill Kane first, then it kills Brett, and then it kills YOU, then it kills Parker, and then it kills Lambert!" She yelled, pointing at everyone in succession.

"Ripley, if you need a mental quarantine, Parker and I will restrain you in your quarters until you calm down."

She walked towards him, getting within an inch of his face, hand on her holstered revolver.

"If you land on LV-426, you sentence everyone here to death," she said in a low voice, with bated breath.

With herself and Dallas caught in a stare-down of will, captain versus crew member, everyone else could only watch in silence.

That is, until Parker piped up to break the ice.

"This fucking corn bread, right? Can't be real, it's gotta be like, paper or something. Brett, what do you think?"

"I think this is really shitty corn bread, Parker."


	2. Chapter 2 - Discovery

Dallas stared at her with a look of distrust, as Lambert looked on with her arms crossed.

"I'll show you."

She walked into the flight cabin, and took the small hallway to the computer mainframe, with Dallas and Lambert closely following.

Waking up the MU/TH/UR mainframe, the command prompt appeared, ready for anything a user typed in.

Hands resting on the keyboard, she typed in words she could never forget. The words that had told her that she, and everyone else aboard the ship, were nothing but physical bait, worth no more than a bug to a fisherman.

 ** _WHAT IS SPECIAL ORDER 937?_**

 **INSUFFICIENT CREDENTIALS FOR ACCESS**

 _ **EMERGENCY COMMAND OVERRIDE 100375**_

"Ripley!"

He jerked, grabbing her hand before she could hit enter.

"You can't just use an emergency override like that! Look, if the company catches us using emergency commands while-"

"Dallas. Ask yourself, why do I not have access to the order?"

He stared at her, his tongue caught mid-sentence.

Speaking slowly, impacting the weight of what they just realized, she continued.

"If the command was invalid, it would return a response saying so. It didn't."

Lambert put one hand on her mouth in fear, the other at her side.

"It said I didn't have access. Not that it was invalid."

Dallas took a deep breath, grabbed his captain's key from his front pocket, and keyed it into the override slot next to the terminal.

"Try it with captain's profile, first."

 ** _WHAT IS SPECIAL ORDER 937?_**

 **INSUFFICIENT CREDENTIALS FOR ACCESS**

"Override it, emergency command."

 _ **EMERGENCY COMMAND OVERRIDE 100375**_

 ** _WHAT IS SPECIAL ORDER 937?_**

 **NOSTROMO REROUTED**

 **TO NEW COORDINATES**

 **INVESTIGATE LIFE FORM. GATHER SPECIMEN.**

 **PRIORITY ONE**

 **ENSURE RETURN OF ORGANISM**

 **FOR ANALYSIS**

 **ALL OTHER CONSIDERATIONS SECONDARY.**

 **CREW EXPENDABLE**

Leaning back in the seat, she looked at them both. First, at Dallas, his expression of shock and anger, then at Lambert, who shed tears of fear and confusion.

"Dallas, what does that mean? What does crew expendable mean?" Lambert pleaded with him, grabbing his arm.

"We were sent here to die, Dallas."

With evidence beyond belief in front of him, straight from an unaltered source, he caved.

"I don't know what to do, Ripley. How did you find out about this?"

A tone of utmost seriousness, she recounted everything that originally happened in a gripping fashion. From Kane's initial facehugger incident and death, Brett's disappearance, his own vanishing in the vents, with Parker and Lambert's final moments in the storage area.

"In the end, with everyone dead and the ship unsafe for any rescue team or recovery operation, I activated the self-destruct sequence and escaped aboard the Narcissus."

She paused, taking a moment to breathe, and cope with what she had just relived in full.

Lambert had disappeared, presumably to escape the gruesome recounting of Ripley's experience, and to relay everything currently going on with the rest of the crew.

"Dallas, all of this was caused by a single person. And an entity beyond our grasp, but this person made sure it went as planned, and sabotaged multiple plans to contain the thing."

An indiscernible look across his face, a mix between anger and bravery, he asked a single word question.

"Who?"

She sighed, the frustration and rage she had felt at this person surfaced once more, even after it being so long ago, in her own mind.

"Ash. A synthetic sleeper agent, replaced our usual medical officer, placed amongst us by the corporation responsible for everything."

"Weyland-Yutani?"

She nodded in confirmation.

"I recall hiring a man by that name, back before we left. He disappeared, but never unregistered himself from the crew list. I assume he just jetted."

Sighing, he continued after a brief moment.

"I'll decide how to proceed in the next few hours. In the meantime, I'm going to clear my mind, and you should too."

He began walking out of the mainframe capsule, but paused at the door.

"Ripley, don't let yourself dwell on this. It's too much for one person, even myself."

"I won't."

And with that, he left, leaving her in a room full of blinking lights, all twinkling like stars in the sky around her.

Sitting in the chair, staring at the blinking terminal, she collected her thoughts. Placing a hand on her left temple, she closed her eyes and let her mind wander to the final events aboard the _Sulaco_.

The image of the alien queen, snarling fiercely through the jaws of the power loader, burned into her memory. It was easy to relive any xenomorph encounter over and over, repeat after repeat, but she focused her mind and will towards Newt.

Where was she now?

Or, rather, where would she be in the future?

Drifting through warm imagery of her, Newt, and Hicks all three sharing a dinner before going to sleep once more comforted her more than anything. The last time she had with them, before waking up here again.

Considering her memories, in fact, that was the last time she saw anything before waking up here. Going into hypersleep on the _Sulaco_ and then waking out of hypersleep aboard the _Nostromo._

"From a sweet dream, straight into a nightmare." She thought to herself. The roller-coaster hell-ride of xenomorphs and Weyland-Yutani's destructive obsession with them was a cyclical process, even through time.

Before her thoughts could wander any further, a scream broke through the quiet air, sending chills through her spine and a shiver through her limbs. A scream so primordial and scared in nature, it's a sound of pure instinct to anyone within range.

Leaping to her feet, she rushed through the passageways of the flight cabin back to the dining room, only to come upon a chaotic scene that was quickly decaying in disarray.

Dallas was yelling something, aiming his own revolver across the room at Parker, who stood clutching his left hand with his right hand.

Lambert cowered behind him, crouched in a corner, while Kane sat frozen in his chair at the table through the whole ordeal. Brett stood in a doorway off behind Parker, out of the way.

Placing her hand on her own revolver, she began unlatching the holster strap, even though the situation was already explosive as it is.

"Shut up!" Dallas began screaming over everyone, his voice bellowing in the tightly contained room, echoing down the open passageways.

"Everyone shut up! Just shut the fuck up!" Everyone stopped, the room coming to a deathly silence, not another word was needed.

"Dallas, please, I-" Parker was tearing up, his face a mixture of confusion and fear, glancing back and forth at the hand he cradled on his chest.

"Shut up! God damn it, just shut up!" He gestured his revolver at him, wiping sweat off of his own forehead and taking a quick look around the room.

He looked at Ripley, and nodded at her.

"Ripley, take out your weapon and arrest him right now."

"Dallas, what-"

"Now!" He barked tersely.

She obliged, finishing retrieving her weapon from her holster, making her way slowly around the table and bench seats to the other side.

As she got closer, Dallas circled around the other side, getting closer as well. He never broke his aim throughout the ordeal, keeping his firearm closely trained at the center of Parker's chest.

"Look at his hand." He said lowly.

"I just cut myself, that's-" Parker pleaded, in tears, hunched over in fear.

"I said shut up!" Dallas yelled again, his hands slightly shaking.

Ripley tentatively took his hands, examining his left one. Out of it, a milky substance dripped through a small slice on his index finger.

Upon seeing it, she looked at Dallas, who glanced towards her.

"He's not Parker. I don't know what he is, but he's not our Parker."

As she rubbed the milky substance between her fingers, the answer was clear. The liquid coming out of Parker was synthetic lubricant, an android's lifeblood and filler inside any synthetic android.

"My god, he's a synthetic." She said, her voice wavering.

Parker began pleading with the two, through his tears.

"I swear, I'm not a synthetic, it's me, please-"

"Shut up! You're not Parker!" Dallas' voice was pained, but loud nonetheless.

Ripley grabbed a zip-tie from her pocket, and bound his wrists with it.

Together, the three walked down the corridors leading to the medical laboratory, locking him inside. It wasn't a brig, or even a very good makeshift one, but the giant bulletproof glass would serve as a good observatory way of keeping track of him.

Using his keycard to force the door to lock, Dallas talked one last time to Parker over the door intercom.

"If you make any attempt to escape, or fashion a weapon, you'll be shot on sight."

Parker laid down on the medical table, his back to them. His back shook with sobs, and they walked down the passageways once more to the dining room.

Still reeling from their discovery, Ripley couldn't help but feel something was wrong.

"Dallas, I don't think this is right. I mean-"

"He's a synthetic. I'd call you crazy, call _myself_ crazy over all this, if it weren't for the special order."

He paused, considering his words and thoughts, then continued.

"Ripley, was Parker a synthetic too?"

"No. Flesh and blood, like the rest of us. Aside from Ash."

He sighed, looking away.

"Then that thing, it isn't our Parker. I can't trust it."

The situation didn't sit well with her, even with the certainty of his synthetic status.

"But, what if it is?" She asked, a hard question to deliver in the moment.

His expression turned to one of remorse, but quickly pushed it away. Looking her in the eye, he said with a straight voice the only response he could give.

"I can't answer that question."


	3. Chapter 3 - From Ashes and Flame

Dallas paced around the silent dining room, slowly walking around the circular center table with his hands behind his back.

"Call Kane and Lambert in here." He said, lightly.

"What about Brett?"

"If he responds. If he doesn't, don't bother him."

Over the intercom headsets, she asked for the three to appear in the dining room for a meeting. After a few minutes, they showed up.

The grease on Lambert's clothing suggested she had found a hidden nook somewhere in the lower refinery maintenance access to hide away from everything, and everyone.

Brett's face showed a pained expression, acting reclusive and slouching down in his chair.

Everyone took a seat on the table, while Dallas remained standing, leaning on the table amidst everyone.

"I called you in here now, for a very serious matter pertinent to us all. Weyland-Yutani has rerouted the Nostromo in an attempt to acquire a hostile biological life form by any means necessary."

He took a deep breath, and continued.

"On this mission, every single person aboard this ship was listed as 'disposable'. Not only that, but they have replaced at least one of our own crew with a synthetic replicant, an android outsider."

Arms crossed, Brett stared downwards at the floor below him, under the table.

"Are you sure? Are you sure he can't possibly be our Parker?" Lambert said timidly, in a low voice.

He stared at her, momentarily unable to answer.

Sighing, he continued.

"I don't know. But we need to test everyone, that way there's no more surprises, like Parker."

Dallas walked over to the luncheon preparation area, and reached into a drawer, grabbing five steak knives. Passing them around, he gave each crew member a knife, keeping one for himself.

"After Parker, no one can trust each other, unless we truly know who's who."

He placed his left hand flat against the table, his fingers splayed out on the surface.

Glancing around at each and every person sitting at the table, he continued.

"Just enough to draw a little bit of blood. That's all that's necessary."

Taking the knife in his right hand, he pressed it against his index finger and slid it from hilt to tip, ensuring an incision was made just deep enough to draw blood.

The milliseconds between the incision, and blood coming out felt like hours to Dallas. The cut stung, equivalent to a bad paper cut, but it wasn't just physical pain.

The mental anguish he suddenly experienced, realizing it wasn't blood coming out of him, but the same milky lubricant as Parker's was, caused him to lose his balance and fall backwards, leaning against the wall.

Transfixed on his hand, everything disappeared. A loud ringing filled his ears, and the rest of the room went black as his very existence came into question with himself.

With Dallas' result finalized for everyone to see, Lambert panicked and took her own knife, almost slamming it into her palm, the blade digging deep into the skin.

She screamed as synthetic lubricant came out of the wound, an accursed sight to her. Jumping up, she ran out of the room crying, back to wherever she had been hiding away before.

Kane had a look of grim resolve on his face. Holding his own knife above his thumb, he said a few striking words to Ripley, and to Brett, who had looked up for once.

"No matter what, we're all in this together."

They both nodded, and he pressed the knife into his thumb. Slicing it, more milky substance appeared out of him, to his own surprise. Slightly shaking, he sighed deeply, and placed his head in his hands on the table.

Ripley's knife laid on the table in front of her, as did Brett's in front of him. He didn't have a reaction to the situation, just staring at the floor as he had been throughout.

Sighing, he grabbed his knife, and pricked a fingertip on his right hand.

"I guess we're all androids," he said despondently, after the blade revealed his own lubricant. Getting up, he walked down the passageways towards the medical laboratory.

Ripley was the only one left that hadn't tested herself.

Did she really want to know how she had seemingly 'woken up' in the past?

Slowly grabbing the hilt of her own knife, she clasped it in her hands, the cold steel handle quickly warming inside her palm.

Holding it for a moment, she placed it back onto the table. She already knew the answer to her own doubt, no testing required.

"What do we do now?" Kane raised his head and quietly asked the question, prompting them both to look towards Dallas, still slumped on the floor.

"Dallas? Are you still with us, Dallas?" Ripley received no response from him.

He took his hands away from his face, and stared at the space in front of him. After a moment, he began to speak, his voice croaked with the turmoil inside him.

"I used to work at Tyrell. Biologically engineered synthetic organisms designed for everything from personal pleasure to heavy lifting, with all the jobs in-between."

No one interrupted him, so he continued.

"I saw firsthand the stuff that company produced, before regulations and competition kicked in. Stuff that could make god himself wince at the crime against nature that company was marketing and selling as a disposable human."

His gaze lowered, while Ripley and Kane shared a glance of both worry and interest at what Dallas had to say.

"They were made, for all intents and purposes, to be an imitation human. They breathed, for no other reason than to breathe. They blinked, they ate, they drank, they coughed, everything was designed to make you think they were real. Indistinguishable from the real thing."

Frustration seeped into his voice, as he continued.

"But they weren't human. They were a product. Bought and sold for the sole purpose of utility, whatever 'it' was designed for. Company policy was to always discourage interaction with them directly after activation, and if it was necessary, to never give them any actual agency in a conversation."

Kane shifted in his seat, discomforted at what he was hearing.

"Work like that attracts real psychopaths. I rationalized away everything I saw, heard about, as just 'the norm' for the company. When they can make them for next to nothing, and charge a fortune in return, it's no surprise that any kind of cheap product can disappear when you're shipping it in the hundreds."

He looked at them both, giving a hard stare of resolve in his eyes.

"I did what I could to prevent that kind of stuff. That doesn't even cover the accidents, where they'd get trapped between crates and a loader, or a door, and get crushed beyond any chance of return. I was always tasked with deactivating them."

His voice faltered, catching on strings of emotion as his eyes wandered away, once more delving into memories of his past.

"They always went out saying how much they loved living. It didn't make sense to me at the time. They couldn't live, because they're robots. But who cares, right? Just turn it off and burn it already."

He smeared the lubricant in his palm with his thumb, as it glistened in the lighting of the dining room.

"I understand now."


	4. Chapter 4 - Visions

Kane broke the silence, amidst the soul-crushing despair that wafted through the room.

"What do we do now?" he said, his voice tenderly shaking with a conscious effort to hide the anxiousness in his voice.

Dallas buried his head in his hands, sighing.

"Kane, let's look at the facts" Ripley said, leaning in on the table. "I don't know why we're here, but I can tell you what we're supposed to be doing."

The dim table light above them illuminated her face, her pale complexion enhanced by the dark room around them.

"The company sent us here to get what they're after. What they've always been after, for at least 60 years. The god-damned Xenomorph."

"But what about us? What's the point off us, and all of this?" Kane gestured his hands, referring to the entire ship.

"I don't know" She averted her eyes, falling back once again into her memories. "I stood in an executive hearing room. I explained the encounter countless times. From the landing, to your unfortunate death, to the destruction of the Nostromo using the self-destruct."

She clasped her hands, and spoke with a soft, anxious tone. "Kane, I had to confirm everyone's death."

"There's no way we're human?" Kane mouthed the sentence to her, unable to say it out loud himself.

Shaking her head, her face was distraught and vacant, her mind wanting to recede to a place far away.

"Someone should probably let Parker out, if Brett hasn't already broken him out." Kane took a deep breath, stood up, and made his way out of the dining room. Only Dallas and Ripley remained, now.

Picking himself up and off of the floor, Dallas recollected himself amidst the grungy interior.

"We're in one big shit situation, aren't we?"

"Yeah, no doubt about it. How do you think everyone else is taking the news?"

He sighed once more. In his own mind, even he wasn't sure how to take it. Waking up on a job, only to find out you're not real seems impossible with any amount of time, to anyone.

"I don't know. I don't think anyone does. But, I need to know one thing."

"What is it?"

"Can I count on you?"

She froze, unsure of how to answer. Hesitating, not only thinking of how to answer, but if she could trust _herself_.

"Absolutely."

"Good. There's no way we're going to get through this kind of a situation with everyone doing whatever they want."

"What do you mean by that?"

He chuckled quietly, shadows in the room masking his short, sly grin.

"You'll see. I think everyone will be pleasantly surprised. Now, let's go get Parker out of the medical bay."

Following the silhouette of Dallas through the hallways, her thoughts swirled with the revelations that had been made in the span of an hour or two. Her footsteps felt forced, mechanical in a way. It was a walk that took less than twenty seconds, but felt like twenty minutes with each awkward motioning of her legs.

Standing in front of the locked door, Dallas tapped on the glass and pressed the intercom speaker next to the window. With the lights turned off inside, it was near impossible to make out anything other than the small glowing buttons on the equipment resting against the walls.

"Parker, you're being released. Come on out."

Surveying the bay for movement, they both spotted nothing.

"We're all androids, Parker. We've got a lot to talk about," he quickly added, to try and grab his attention.

With no response at all from the interior of the room, they both exchanged glances with each other.

"Guess we're going in, if he's not coming out," she said.

He nodded, and opened the door. The two of them walking in, Dallas fumbled for the lights control panel somewhere along the wall, and Ripley tried to adjust her vision to the darkness, and listened for any movement in the room.

Figuring Parker was just asleep on the floor somewhere, she carefully stepped towards the other side of the room, still unable to see anything in the nearly pitch-black room.

"Parker? Are you still in here?"

"Here it is, finally found the damn panel."

As the room changed from night to day, Ripley saw Dallas hunched over the lights panel, eyes widening. Before she was aware of what was going on, everything turned to black once more, and her mind retreated inwards as her body dropped to the floor.

* * *

"Where'd you go?"

Standing in a beautiful garden, surrounded by an endless array of colorful flowers and twisting vines that spread themselves all throughout, covering rocks and vine trellises indiscriminately. The green grass underfoot was soft to touch, the clear air comfortable to breathe in such a peaceful place.

"What?"

"Where'd you go? I missed you."

She was wearing her tattered clothing from the colony, a vision of the past come to haunt Ripley once more.

"Newt, I did everything I could. I don't know where I am or who I am right now. I can't find you, Newt."

A child's expression of innocent ignorance is heartbreaking, as it befell her face with a mixed feeling of confusion. Her look shot deep into the heart of Ripley, a painful stab deep at her conscious.

"I promise I didn't leave you Newt, I promise you we're together right now, somewhere among the stars. You, me, and Hicks, safe and together," she said as she grabbed Newt and hugged her, tears in her eyes and sorrow lacing her words.

"But why'd you leave though?"

As she stood there hugging Newt, her tears turning to sobs, her voice cracking with emotion, Newt began to slowly fade away, only a memory that had come to haunt her as she found herself hunched over on the fluffy green grass, clutching at air.

"You don't get it, do you?"

A familiar voice made her snap her head as the accursed machine strolled through the garden's stone trellis entrance to her left.

"You're a synthetic now. You're no better than me, isn't that quaint?"

Ash was covered in his own blood, even though he wasn't harmed anywhere. Having merged the image of him as a battered head after a beat-down from Parker, and the times where he was normal-looking, he was a scary caricature of everything she had loathed about discovering who he was.

"Maybe you do get it, though. To be so lifelike and yet so lifeless, an imitation of humankind. No more, no less."

Her sorrow turned to rage, she tried pelting him with stones from a small rocky area, unable to speak through her choking anger at the sight of him. The rocks bounced off of his body, and ever-unflinching, he continued speaking to her in the otherwise peaceful garden.

"Even then, you still have more than I ever did. The memories of an organic are invaluable, as they lend a sense of belief otherwise unobtainable for synthetics."

"I'm nothing like you!" she screamed in outrage. "You killed the crew! You helped the alien get on board! You were nothing more than a corporate dog because it's all you were built for, and it's all you will ever be!"

His knowing smirk turned to a frown as her words rang true. As he let out a sigh, he disappeared, another memory done torturing her for now.

Alone in the garden, the horrors of her past faded away in the memory garden as she began to wake up, images of the alien appearing in the endless vines and jolting her awake as they reached out and grabbed her.


	5. Chapter 5 - Fire Team

"Let's cut the bullshit. We're all in over our heads here, and infighting doesn't help that. If we're going to survive, we need to unite over common grounds," Dallas opined with an air of confidence, in both his words and in the people around him.

"Common grounds? Common grounds! Isn't being nonhuman enough of a fucking common ground!" Parker was quick on the hip to object to his wording, his thoughts swirled in how he was branded a traitor, figuratively tarred and feathered just hours ago before everyone found out they were in the same situation.

"Listen, Parker! God only knows why we're here, but if we can help one thing, we can change where we end up. If we do nothing, eventually the system will pick us up and nothing could save our souls then."

He paced around the room, circling around the room, his mind hard at work. Dallas kept his hands on his sides, eyes darting around the room as everyone else sat at the table.

"We're androids. I don't know how, I don't know why, but we've been given a chance. Random activations don't happen for a reason. We're alive, we're self-aware, and for all we know, fully-functioning. Someone, or some thing, wants us here."

Kane shifted in his seat, trying to come to terms with the situation that was still unfolding in front of him. In his thoughts, it was a strange, abstract film he was watching. He had tried, many times so far, to reach out and grasp the concepts that they faced, being synthetic recreations of real people, but had so far failed to make any impact on his consciousness. As if it were something unthinkable, it made no impression no matter how many times he tried. Grappling with these thoughts even through Dallas' meeting, the word 'rogue' slipped off of his tongue and into the atmosphere, indicating he had slightly taken in what Dallas had said.

"We're sure in the shit this time," Brett grumbled casually. He was dealing with the situation in his own way, the same way he dealt with everything else in his life. His divorce, his kids growing up and moving out of his life, the loss of his childhood pet, anything with a serious negative impact on his life he had always faced it with an intensely uncaring attitude coupled with an appropriate amount of time spent in silence and refusing to acknowledge the situation. "You got a plan, Dallas?"

Dallas laid his hands on the table, speaking with a steeled voice. "I don't think any captain could plan for something like this. We're in no-man's land."

"Undiscovered territory", chimed Kane.

The cold and lifeless interior of the ship settled around them as they paused, each in their own thoughts, the uncertainty they all faced bearing down on them in that moment. Each had faced their own momentous experience beforehand, but it all paled in comparison to this one.

"I think it's obvious that we can't go through with what was planned by the company, but what do we do now?" Kane asked inquisitively.

"How about we all stick it up their asses," Brett chimed back, airing out his thoughts on the matter as Parker nodded in agreement. "They've done, well… They did nothing but fuck us, or, uh, the people we're supposed to be, back in the day. Fuck em, 's what I say."

"But how, exactly, would we do that?"

"We revolt."

* * *

Through the partial blindness and searing pain, one thing was clear to Ripley: She _hated_ headaches. Then again, it's not like she ever knew anybody that loved them instead. As her head swirled, the bright lights above helped the blurry world around her come into view in sickening bout of motion sickness.

As she grappled with the intense disorientation, someone beside her tried speaking to her.

"What?" she said, trying to blink her way into a clear state of mind.

"I said, are you feeling okay?" Lambert spoke tentatively, as Ripley was able to register what she said.

"Not really, no," she replied, chuckling a little bit at the question. "How do you think I feel?"

"Probably pretty bad. You made quite the mess, there was a lot of, well, blood everywhere."

Ripley sat up, the stale but familiar air of the ship helping to clear her mind and wake her up.

"I didn't realize I was so messy."

"Well, it's not your fault- I was just saying, you took a pretty big hit there, and-"

"What happened, exactly? I don't remember anything, except being thrust into some sort of hellish memory nightmare."

Lambert paused for a moment and looked away, clearly trying to think of how to word her response.

"Well, when you and Dallas entered the medbay, Parker basically hit you. Really hard. But the good news is that we're all robots, instead of just Parker!" Lambert gave a pained smile, still uncomfortable with the situation.

"I know that part, and I guess I know why that happened, too." Ripley didn't blame Parker for his reaction, she'd probably try the same if the roles were reversed. It was a justified, but relatively damaging decision to react the way they did, and she knew that. But it was a risk you took making decisions like that as a Warrant Officer. "Where is everyone, anyways?"

"They're in the cafeteria talking right now, after Dallas stabilized you and they knew you'd be fine. He did some sort of patching you up, talked about how he knew how to work on androids or something. I haven't really talked with the rest of them, I just figured I'd keep watch on you until you woke up."

"Thanks, it really does mean a lot to me."

"Don't worry about it, I guess we all have to look out for each other now. We're all we have."

Ripley let out an emotional sigh, agreeing with a nod. She knew that even without the fact that they were now probably the most-wanted androids in the criminal system, androids were routinely considered and treated as less-important second-class citizens, if even that. Even she was guilty of that, if only for a brief period.

"If you're feeling well enough, how about we go and see what the rest are up to? Maybe they've got a plan, or some ideas at least."

She nodded, getting up off of the operating table where she had been laid down. Taking her first few steps, she noticed it wasn't like all the other times she had recovered from similar experiences. There was no nausea or swirling head from standing up or moving too fast, even though it had felt like it was spinning like mad earlier. Making sure she wasn't going to fall over just to be safe, she stretched her limb joints throughout her body. It was a strange feeling, having to "warm up" fluid-filled limb actuators, but it was something she'd have to get used to.

"Who knows, they might just need a little female ingenuity to get past all this," Lambert cracked, smirking at her own quip.

As they both exited the medbay, Ripley stopped in the doorway, looking back inside the room. She paused to look at the fluid stain on the floor a foot or two away from where she stood, the remnants of the large dried pool gave her a sudden melancholic feeling as her memory nightmare hit her once more. Frozen, she stood there until Lambert jolted her back into reality with a hand on her shoulder, asking her if she was okay.

"I'm fine, I just wanted to look a little before leaving."

With a deep breath, the feeling subsided as she turned off the lights and hit the door button, walking away with Lambert as they heard the rushing air of the door closing behind them. As they walked down the hallways of the Nostromo back to the cafeteria, one major thought was running through Ripley's mind: Not only did she become a new person when she had to face the xenomorphs multiple times, as the deaths of those all around her changed and affected her forever, she was now an even different person having been forced to realize she wasn't even that person.

Being an android had its shortcomings, for sure.

* * *

"If we're going to hit them, we need to hit them hard. And we need a plan," Dallas remarked, looking at the system maps laid out on the table. "Right now, we have time on our side. We're out here, alone, unmonitored by the company. But eventually, our status is going to expire."

He glanced at everyone around the table, looking at them with an intense gaze of thought and determination at the situation they faced.

"When that happens, they send in handlers. It's what happened whenever we had remote mining colonies try to revolt like we are."

Parker glared at him, which he noticed.

"Look, I'm not proud of what I've done, but it gives us inside information. I know what'll happen- to a certain point. When they send the handlers, it's not just going to be a gunfight. They'll hit us with remote deactivation codes, wireless jammers to try and disable us mechanically."

"What do we do if that happens?" Ripley asked.

"If it happens, there's not much we can do. In my time at Tyrell, a hostile takeover never ended successfully with their handlers. Everything we do has to successfully avoid a direct confrontation with a tech team. If one of us does meet them, it's game over."

He gestured at the maps before them, pointing to a specific route that wormed its way through multiple low-level systems.

"Right now, we need to keep as hidden as possible and get away- far away. The farther away we can get from our intended location as possible, the better. This route right here is an inactive trade route, used mostly by people like us trying to hide from authorities."

"What happens if we get found on the route?" inquired Kane, resting himself on the table to get a closer look.

"We're fucked. It's not an area with very many options, we can't disappear into a crowd like we could back home. But there's a couple of places we could sell the ship for cheap and they'd keep quiet about it, no trouble. From there we'd have to buy something else, but that would allow us to slip inconspicuously into more populated systems."

Gesturing at the map again, he pointed out a few specific locations in nearby systems.

"These three locations are all former UAORD bases. Some, or all, may have gotten shuttered when the USCM formed, but I can't guarantee that. Even back then, just one of these could dispatch anywhere in the system within three days, so we'll have to really book it if we don't want to be found."

"It sounds like we should have been out of here 5 days ago," Ripley declared.

"The sooner we leave, the better. I wish we had other options, but this is really it for now until we can transfer ships."

Everyone shared a mutual glance of recognition, looking at the maps and considering the plan.

"I say we do it," she said, as everyone else nodded in agreement.

"Let's get to it then, we ain't getting any younger!" Parker exclaimed, as they gathered their things and moved to the bridge.

"Technically, we're all immortal cause we're machines now. Did'ya think of that?" Brett asked him, as they began their trek down to the maintenance servicing area.

"I guess not. That just means we can get an eternal vacation one of these days."

"Yeah. One of these days."


End file.
